The guests go in to supper: Celebrating the American Avant-Garde, 40th Anniversary Concert
SMO celebrates The guests go in to supper (1986), a seminal work featuring text scores and ideas from luminaries of the late 20th-century American Avant-Garde: John Cage, Laurie Anderson, Yoko Ono, Charles Amirkhanian, and Robert Ashley. The two-night interactive and multi-disciplinary program takes place May 1 & 2 at the Whim W’Him Contemporary Dance Center. Each composer included in the original collection is featured through score exploration, video, or performance. The focal work of this anniversary celebration is Cage’s Mushrooms et variationes.
PURCHASE PACKAGE TICKETS, including both the May 1 concert and May 2 gala at a discounted price.
PURCHASE CONCERT TICKETS ONLY.
Friday, May 1: 40th Anniversary Concert
Join us for pre-show activities at 7:40 PM.
Some parties are thrown together, and some take a lifetime to realize. In 1986, Melody Sumner, Kathleen Burch, and Michael Sumner created a dinner party in an art book, filled with conversations and text scores from avant-garde luminaries of the time: The guests go in to supper. To mark the 40th Anniversary of the book’s publishing, SMO presents a night of music, poetry, prose, and dance celebrating the composers, works, and conversations in the collection.
The evening will include multiple performance spaces—the Salon, the Gathering Space, and the Sanctuary—fluid audience participation, and an invitation for everyone to sit at the metaphorical table and zoom in and out of conversations between artists. Performers will engage in the change operations to create the evening’s dialogues. The ensemble presents Cage’s long-form poem, Mushrooms et variationes (featuring curator Sarah Kolat) with new dance by James Kirby Rogers alongside Cage’s Music For Seven (by Six). This fusion leans into indeterminacy, choice, and chance, while honoring the historical importance of Cage and Cunningham’s partnership and Seattle’s role in bringing the two visionary artists together. This multi-disciplinary event is a realization of this seminal publication, and you are all invited as The guests go in to supper.
Curator & Vocalist: Sarah Kolat
Dance: James Kirby Rogers
Prose Works & Recitation: Maya Sonenberg
Costume Design: Hannah Larsen
Graphics: Isabela Tellez
PROGRAM:
JOHN CAGE: Mushrooms et variationes (1983)
JOHN CAGE: Music for Seven (by Six) (1986)
JOHN CAGE: In a Landscape (1948)
YOKO ONO: selections from the Instruction Pieces
CHARLES AMIRKHANIAN: Church Car (1980)
YIĞIT KOLAT: Hommage à L. A. : a supper menu – World Premiere
PERFORMERS:
Sarah Pyle, flute
Rachel Yoder, clarinet/voice
Eric Rynes, violin/voice
Jordan Voelker, viola
Abbey Blackwell, bass
Yiğit Kolat, electronics
Bonnie Whiting, percussion/voice
Saturday, May 2: 1986 Avant-Garde Prom
On Saturday night, the supper party turns into a prom inspired by The guests go in to supper and the spirit of 1986: part prom, part performance, part time warp.
CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ON THE MAY 2 GALA.
Thank you to our generous sponsors:
